Simulation and computational study on the accelerated taxiing of the hull of an amphibious aircraft on the still water surface

At present, for the evaluation of the static water taxiing performance of amphibious aircraft, whether it is through pool tests or numerical simulations, the method of taxiing at a constant speed is adopted. However, during the actual takeoff process of an amphibious aircraft on the water surface, the throttle is always kept at the maximum power, and the hull is in an accelerating taxiing state. Using the method of taxiing at a constant speed to evaluate the static water surface taxiing performance of amphibious aircraft is not comprehensive enough. This paper intends to adopt the method of numerical simulation. Based on the two-phase flow and overset mesh technology, it simulates the hydrodynamic performance of the hull of an amphibious aircraft during the taxiing process on the static water surface. The simulation results are compared with the experimental data of the scaled-down model in the water tank. The deviation of water resistance is within 14.5%, the deviation of heave is within 5.5 mm, and the deviation of trim angle is within 0.5°. This verifies the reliability of the numerical simulation model. Furthermore, the hydrodynamic performance of the amphibious aircraft during accelerated planning on the static water surface is studied. The calculation results show that the greater the hull acceleration, the larger the hydrodynamic resistance value. This trend is more obvious, especially near the resistance peak. When the acceleration is 2 m/s 2 , the resistance peak is 20% higher than that in the uniform-speed state. In the low-speed range, the greater the acceleration, the larger the heave value and attitude angle of the model. As the navigation speed increases, the greater the acceleration, the smaller the heave value and attitude angle, and the peak of the attitude angle also shifts backward to some extent. Moreover, there is a significant difference in the hull’s stability between the acceleration and uniform-speed states, which requires further research.